“Exactly!” Catalina says. “We are working that much. On homework.”
Sadie writes down “child labor laws.”
Jaesang puts up his hand. Catalina throws him a perfect spiral. “Bad for the economy.”
We all look at him like, Wait, what?
“Kids doing homework aren’t out spending money at the mall.”
“Neither are their parents, who have to hire tutors,” Sean adds.
Now Sadie puts up her hand, and Jaesang tosses her the ball.
“I forget what it’s like to have fun.” She looks at Sean. “Really, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have this constant feeling like, gotta study, gotta make myself stand out from the crowd.”
I put up my hand. She tosses the ball to me.
“Homework takes away my sister time.”
Sadie looks at me, and everybody listens. “We used to watch movies together and fight over who got more Pirate’s Booty. We’d make stop-motion movies and go to the park with our dogs. We had a life outside of school. Now all that’s gone. I mean, we already spend enough time with our teachers during the day. Why do they have to follow us home?”
“You’re on to something, Sam,” Mr. Kalman says. “The government can’t intrude into the private lives of its citizens. It’s in the Bill of Rights.”
Sadie and Sean bonk their heads as if even the phrase is painful to them.
“The Bill of Rights!”
They jump up and snap to attention like poodles at a dog show. Sean holds out a hand and I pass him the Nerf.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
He tosses the ball to Sadie. “Or abridging the freedom of speech.”
Who passes it back to Sean. “Or of the press.”
Who passes it to Sadie again. “Or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”
Back to Sean. “And to petition the government for a—”
“Redress of grievances!”
Words start streaming out of their mouths like confetti.
Sadie: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state—”
Sean: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Sadie: “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
Sean: “The right of the people to be secure in their—”
Sadie: “Persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures . . .”
Together: “‘Shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.’ Et cetera! Et cetera! Et cetera!” they say, with a triple salute.
Alistair is amazed and starts applauding. The rest of us clap too.
“Miss Benjamin made us memorize the whole thing,” Sean says.
“I can’t believe I still remember them all,” Sadie says.
It’s pretty impressive, I guess, but most of it went over my head. I think I know what grievances are, but what does it mean to redress them?
I glance at Mr. Kalman’s face. He looks surprised. Not just surprised, but disappointed.
“You memorized the Bill of Rights?”
“Part of the torture of eleventh grade,” Sean says.
“No discussion? No context?”
“No time, Mr. Kalman. It was AP US History. We memorized, took a matching test, and moved on.”
“And that,” Mr. Kalman says, “is what’s wrong with our schools.”
We call out for pizza because, Mr. Kalman says, we’ll be working late tonight. Tomorrow we have a filing deadline for our legal brief—an oxymoron, don’t you think, to describe a document that’s eighty pages long—and Mr. Kalman needs our help to make sure he’s covered all the arguments we plan to make next week in court.
So we plow through the pizza and the pages, and nobody wants to be the first to leave. Catalina, Jaesang, and Sean team up on statistics, reading scientific studies on things like anxiety and stress and sleep among kids today, and the number of hours per night they spend on homework, and whether or not homework even helps kids learn. Sean puts all the information into charts that Mr. Kalman can show in court.
Meanwhile, Sadie is helping Mr. Kalman organize the flow of his argument, something she learned how to do in speech and debate, and Alistair and I keep everyone on track. The whiteboard fills up with Sadie’s outline, and soon we need someplace easy to post our to-do list, so Alistair whips off his shirt and says, “I took a bath this morning, guys. I’m a clean slate.”
A fire in the fireplace keeps him warm.
Around ten, all that’s left are pizza crusts and burnt logs. Mr. Kalman checks the last item off Alistair’s shoulder and says the brief is ready to be filed. Sean saves a PDF of it to his Dropbox and prints two copies for Mr. Kalman, who likes to do things old school, by hand.
Then Mr. Kalman thanks us for all the sweat work. “Don’t let anyone ever call you slackers,” he says. “Not after the yeoman’s job you’ve done here today.”
It’s funny how Mr. Kalman talks, using words as old as he is. I sneak a peek at my dictionary.com app to find out that we performed in a loyal, valiant, useful, or workman-like manner, especially in situations that involve a great deal of effort or labor. In other words, we’ve been busting our butts tonight. And we should be proud.
Sadie and I stay late to help clean up. Mr. Kalman makes tea and brings out a Sara Lee fudge cake from his freezer. We eat straight from the tin.
Then I hear Sadie tell Mr. Kalman that something’s been bothering her since the day we had our hearing. She wants to know what Livingston Gulch meant by whose urine to test.
“That was just a little dig at me.”
“What for?”
“A case I argued once. Before the Supreme Court.”
“You argued in front of the Supreme Court?” I say.
“Once upon a time, Sam.”
“What about?”
“Drug testing in the public schools. Privacy, really. A high school in Oklahoma decided it wasn’t fair to test only athletes for drug use. They didn’t want to give
